September 5 (Film Review)
Jan. 28th, 2025 04:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakA taut, intense thriller, which got just Oscar-nominated for best original script. Here's crossing my fingers they win, and not just because the co-scriptwriter, Moritz Binder, is a homeboy (i.e. from Munich). (The director, Tim Fehlbaum, is Swiss. The film while being a German coproduction was shot in English as the original language, though.) It's just a superbly crafted movie, and compares favourably to one of the lesser Steven Spielberg movies, to wit, Munich, in which Spielberg tackled the aftermath of the the September 5 events. What both movies also have in common is that they combine the suspense thriller structure with a morality play, in the case of September 5 about personal and professional ethics of the media and in the case of Munich, essentially, about justice versus vengeance and what price vengeance. Spielberg tried to pack in too much, went for the sprawling epic vein, did action sequences in lots of countries and one horribly awkward sex scene (confirming my suspicion he just can't do sex scenes), and ultimately, his movie while not uninteresting failed, and I never had the desire to rewatch. Meanwhile, Fehlbaum essentially has just one location for the entire movie - the small studio ABC used during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich -, literally never leaves it, a very small ensemble of characters, all talk and no on screen action (when things start to go horribly wrong, they do so via sound and some footage the main characters watch on their own viewscreens), and succeeds with flying colours.
What it is about, exactly: Our heroes are a small group of US sports journalists (and one (female) German translator) working for ABC and reporting live from Munich in the summer of 1972; these were the first Olympic Games to be broadcast live around the world. (Sidenote: I was a three years old toddler and thus have no personal memories, but my parents, who lived just two hours away from Munich, managed to get tickets for several events and were incredibly excited beforehand. It's had to overestimate what a big deal these Munich Olympics were in German, especially for young people like my parents or the character of Marianne in this movie. Not least because they were meant to showcase a changed Germany and were very much designed to be the exact opposite of the 1936 Berlin Olympics under the Nazis. In 2022, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary, there were commemorative events in Munich through the entire year, both because of the tragedy that ensued and because of the transformation these Olympics achieved beforehand for Munich.)This is a time when all the various broadcasters have to use the same satelite, with prearranged timeslots, cameras were really heavy to carry around, and anything digital is still a futuristic dream. And then, in the early early morning hours of September 5th, gun shots are heard in the Olympic village...
The movie (95 minutes all in all) covers basically one day (and night), as the sports journalists with the help of their German translator learn there was a terrorist attack not too far from their studio, with the Israeli athletes taken hostage (two were murdered right away as it later turned out, but nobody knew that then). At which point ABC central in the US wants the News section (in the US) taking over, with the Munich crew only providing footage, but the Munich crew, headed by John Magaro's character Geoffrey Mason and Peter Sarsgaard's character Roone Arledge, refuses and insists on doing the reporting themselves; it's a "scoop of the century" feeling ever more intermingled with the parallel awareness that by reporting not sports but a terrorist hostage taging with threatenened executions live, they are making themselves part of the story - and providing exactly the publicity to the terrorists they want. The film's trailer already gives away one of the most chilling sequences, in which the tv journalists, filming the German police in their attempt to enter the house in which the hostages are kept from above, realize that since all the houses for the international athletes in the Olympic Village were equipped with tvs able to receive international broacast, the terrorists are watching this very same broadcast.
This isn't Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole; none of the American journalists are cynics caring about ratings above human lives. They're presented as sympathetic and ambitious at the same time. And yet, what they are doing is preparing the road to hell, err, 24 hours news live coverage, and when two of them discuss whether if the hostages really do get executed as threatened they should show this, too, in the knowledge it will be watched by the family and parents, we the viewing audience realize today a great many media people would not even have the discussion anymore. (Certainly none of the social media moguls.) The film doesn't restage any of the events; as it remains within the tiny studio, the director is able to use actual tv footage (sidenote for people not familiar with the events, not of executions, there is none as the two Israelis killed in the Olympic Village were killed inside, and the others died later at the airport) from 50 plus years ago, i.e. we the audience see only as much as the journalists did, we never leave their pov, and what we see of the outside we only see via transmission or recorded footage. This heightens the sense of claustrophobia and having to make fateful decisions with only limited information, and the film simultanously manages to never lose sight of the humanity of the hostages instead of reducing them to suspense MacGuffins; early on, Marianne copies their photos and names out of the brochure of the Olympic Games, and these photos the camera returns to all through the story, including in the last shot.
In addition to the scoop-turning-horror-suspense story, you have all kinds of interesting personal dynamics. It's not even thirty years after the second World War ended, one of the Israeli athletes (who also has American citizenship and thus was interviewed by ABC beforehand) is shown visiting Dachau, and when Geoffrey asks Marianne "Are your parents still alive? Let me guess, they didn't know anything, either", the accusation is palpable. (Marianne is played by Leonie Benesch (whom some viewers might have seen in last year's German Oscar nomination, The Teaching Lounge), and in addition to providing a lot of exposition to both the US journalists and the cinema audience (for example about why there was minimal police presence at the Olympic Games, why the Munich police who initially did the negotiations and aborted rescue attempt had zero training for such matters* and why it would have been against the German constitution to use the army within Germany - three guesses as to the historical reason for that), she's that rarity, a main female character all the other (male) leads confront and have scenes with with absolutely zero romantic overtones. Which isn't to say she's one of the guys. There's a marvellous miniature encapsulement of early 1970s sexism in a scene when they've managed to change the transistor so it captures German police radio and one of men, I forget which one, says "I need some more coffee" with a pointed look to Marianne, since clearly, as the woman, it's her job to get the coffee. Leonie Benesch plays her silent reaction marvellously and you can see what she's thinking, including the decision not to say something as there are more important things going on. The moment she leaves, the police radio chats away and the other guy says "congratulations; you've just sent away the sole person here who speaks German". I should add that there are also scenes of comradery and understanding, and later comfort; my point is the movie doesn't ignore women working behind the cameras in a tv studio in 1972 were still not treated as equals.
Now I was pretty familiar with what happened on September 5th, 1972, including what an utter in-other-their-heads- screw up by the German police and administration that was, but even so, there were were surprises. For example, I did know that then Secretary of the Interior Genscher** had offered to trade himself as a hostage for the Israeli athletes, but I had always assumed he'd done so from Bonn or from Munich's city hall, with the offer being transmitted via radio or something like that. Turns out that no, he actually went right up to the doorstep of the house in the Olympic Village and made the offer in person to the one of the terrorists who did the talking with the negotiators. I have to say, hats off to Genscher, that was actually courageous. (I asked my father whether it might have made a difference to the outcome if the Palestinians had taken him up on the offer. The AP said he thought there would not have been a shootout at the airport if it had been Genscher as the hostage or among the hostages.) And of course I knew about the gut wrenching outcome in advance, but that didn't make less gut wrenching when it came. (And all the actors with their devastation in their faces and written all over their body language embody this. Note that the script avoids easy answers. Yes, Geoff shouldn't have gone ahead and announced the hostages were freed based on one source alone. But wouldn't you have, in his position? Would not have shown any images from the Olympic Village have made a difference? Wouldn't it?) The film doubles down on all this with the juxtaposition of that last shot on the photos of the Israeli hostages and then to the credits telling us 900 million people were watching. The road to hell, indeed.
*This is why in the aftermath of 1972, a new police tactical unit, GSG 9, was established; they famously managed to save all the hostages in the 1977 terrorist hijacking of an airplane.
** Hans Dietrich Genscher later became Foreign Secretary and probably the most powerful and famous one in post war German history so far, serving in both Schmidt's and Kohl's cabinets for their entirety in that function. Post-Genscher, the importance of the foreign office declined, and these days the coalition partners who used to be after the foreign office want the treasury instead
In conclusion, a film that proves that if you tackle a difficult subject of relatively recent history (and ongoing implications for the present), less is more, and you gain rather than lose in quality.
What it is about, exactly: Our heroes are a small group of US sports journalists (and one (female) German translator) working for ABC and reporting live from Munich in the summer of 1972; these were the first Olympic Games to be broadcast live around the world. (Sidenote: I was a three years old toddler and thus have no personal memories, but my parents, who lived just two hours away from Munich, managed to get tickets for several events and were incredibly excited beforehand. It's had to overestimate what a big deal these Munich Olympics were in German, especially for young people like my parents or the character of Marianne in this movie. Not least because they were meant to showcase a changed Germany and were very much designed to be the exact opposite of the 1936 Berlin Olympics under the Nazis. In 2022, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary, there were commemorative events in Munich through the entire year, both because of the tragedy that ensued and because of the transformation these Olympics achieved beforehand for Munich.)This is a time when all the various broadcasters have to use the same satelite, with prearranged timeslots, cameras were really heavy to carry around, and anything digital is still a futuristic dream. And then, in the early early morning hours of September 5th, gun shots are heard in the Olympic village...
The movie (95 minutes all in all) covers basically one day (and night), as the sports journalists with the help of their German translator learn there was a terrorist attack not too far from their studio, with the Israeli athletes taken hostage (two were murdered right away as it later turned out, but nobody knew that then). At which point ABC central in the US wants the News section (in the US) taking over, with the Munich crew only providing footage, but the Munich crew, headed by John Magaro's character Geoffrey Mason and Peter Sarsgaard's character Roone Arledge, refuses and insists on doing the reporting themselves; it's a "scoop of the century" feeling ever more intermingled with the parallel awareness that by reporting not sports but a terrorist hostage taging with threatenened executions live, they are making themselves part of the story - and providing exactly the publicity to the terrorists they want. The film's trailer already gives away one of the most chilling sequences, in which the tv journalists, filming the German police in their attempt to enter the house in which the hostages are kept from above, realize that since all the houses for the international athletes in the Olympic Village were equipped with tvs able to receive international broacast, the terrorists are watching this very same broadcast.
This isn't Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole; none of the American journalists are cynics caring about ratings above human lives. They're presented as sympathetic and ambitious at the same time. And yet, what they are doing is preparing the road to hell, err, 24 hours news live coverage, and when two of them discuss whether if the hostages really do get executed as threatened they should show this, too, in the knowledge it will be watched by the family and parents, we the viewing audience realize today a great many media people would not even have the discussion anymore. (Certainly none of the social media moguls.) The film doesn't restage any of the events; as it remains within the tiny studio, the director is able to use actual tv footage (sidenote for people not familiar with the events, not of executions, there is none as the two Israelis killed in the Olympic Village were killed inside, and the others died later at the airport) from 50 plus years ago, i.e. we the audience see only as much as the journalists did, we never leave their pov, and what we see of the outside we only see via transmission or recorded footage. This heightens the sense of claustrophobia and having to make fateful decisions with only limited information, and the film simultanously manages to never lose sight of the humanity of the hostages instead of reducing them to suspense MacGuffins; early on, Marianne copies their photos and names out of the brochure of the Olympic Games, and these photos the camera returns to all through the story, including in the last shot.
In addition to the scoop-turning-horror-suspense story, you have all kinds of interesting personal dynamics. It's not even thirty years after the second World War ended, one of the Israeli athletes (who also has American citizenship and thus was interviewed by ABC beforehand) is shown visiting Dachau, and when Geoffrey asks Marianne "Are your parents still alive? Let me guess, they didn't know anything, either", the accusation is palpable. (Marianne is played by Leonie Benesch (whom some viewers might have seen in last year's German Oscar nomination, The Teaching Lounge), and in addition to providing a lot of exposition to both the US journalists and the cinema audience (for example about why there was minimal police presence at the Olympic Games, why the Munich police who initially did the negotiations and aborted rescue attempt had zero training for such matters* and why it would have been against the German constitution to use the army within Germany - three guesses as to the historical reason for that), she's that rarity, a main female character all the other (male) leads confront and have scenes with with absolutely zero romantic overtones. Which isn't to say she's one of the guys. There's a marvellous miniature encapsulement of early 1970s sexism in a scene when they've managed to change the transistor so it captures German police radio and one of men, I forget which one, says "I need some more coffee" with a pointed look to Marianne, since clearly, as the woman, it's her job to get the coffee. Leonie Benesch plays her silent reaction marvellously and you can see what she's thinking, including the decision not to say something as there are more important things going on. The moment she leaves, the police radio chats away and the other guy says "congratulations; you've just sent away the sole person here who speaks German". I should add that there are also scenes of comradery and understanding, and later comfort; my point is the movie doesn't ignore women working behind the cameras in a tv studio in 1972 were still not treated as equals.
Now I was pretty familiar with what happened on September 5th, 1972, including what an utter in-other-their-heads- screw up by the German police and administration that was, but even so, there were were surprises. For example, I did know that then Secretary of the Interior Genscher** had offered to trade himself as a hostage for the Israeli athletes, but I had always assumed he'd done so from Bonn or from Munich's city hall, with the offer being transmitted via radio or something like that. Turns out that no, he actually went right up to the doorstep of the house in the Olympic Village and made the offer in person to the one of the terrorists who did the talking with the negotiators. I have to say, hats off to Genscher, that was actually courageous. (I asked my father whether it might have made a difference to the outcome if the Palestinians had taken him up on the offer. The AP said he thought there would not have been a shootout at the airport if it had been Genscher as the hostage or among the hostages.) And of course I knew about the gut wrenching outcome in advance, but that didn't make less gut wrenching when it came. (And all the actors with their devastation in their faces and written all over their body language embody this. Note that the script avoids easy answers. Yes, Geoff shouldn't have gone ahead and announced the hostages were freed based on one source alone. But wouldn't you have, in his position? Would not have shown any images from the Olympic Village have made a difference? Wouldn't it?) The film doubles down on all this with the juxtaposition of that last shot on the photos of the Israeli hostages and then to the credits telling us 900 million people were watching. The road to hell, indeed.
*This is why in the aftermath of 1972, a new police tactical unit, GSG 9, was established; they famously managed to save all the hostages in the 1977 terrorist hijacking of an airplane.
** Hans Dietrich Genscher later became Foreign Secretary and probably the most powerful and famous one in post war German history so far, serving in both Schmidt's and Kohl's cabinets for their entirety in that function. Post-Genscher, the importance of the foreign office declined, and these days the coalition partners who used to be after the foreign office want the treasury instead
In conclusion, a film that proves that if you tackle a difficult subject of relatively recent history (and ongoing implications for the present), less is more, and you gain rather than lose in quality.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-28 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-29 09:14 am (UTC)